Museum Makes Art Out of a Fatberg

The Museum of London is about to make an exhibition of the most perfect artistic metaphor for the state of the nation, with part of the massive Whitechapel Fatberg to be chipped off, encased within an airtight module, then put on display as a lesson for humanity.

The small slice of the holy fatberg artefact has been air-dried in a Thames Water facility in Beckton, a process that makes it more chemically stable, less smelly, and more like the hardened lumps that can block the drains of the nation.

The museum's case for why a lump of grease, syringes, polystyrene and general human effluent should be considered worthy of display goes like this: "The fatberg tells a story about how modern London is changing. The museum’s collection already contains objects from when London’s Victorian sewer system was built, after the city’s health was threatened by water polluted with diseases like cholera. Now, our sewers are threatened by a modern crisis."

So it's like Body Worlds but for the city's arteries. The piece of Fatberg will go on display in early 2018. [Museum of London]